Quotes

"Often… a book of 300 pages would have been a lot better at 120 pages… I just was a judge..."

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:59:56 -0800

“Often… a book of 300 pages would have been a lot better at 120 pages… I just was a judge for the National Book Awards in non-fiction and it was remarkable to me what huge percentage of those books would have been fabulous 120 - 200-page books and were kind of flabby 350-page books. Book length is a somewhat arbitrary size that we’ve gotten used to, and there’s nothing special about it. There’s no reason that a book needs to be 150,000 words except that the business model for what books need to cost to make it work for publishers is that people are willing to pay X dollars for a book of X size and less willing to pay that for a book that’s 120 pages.”

- Susan Orlean.

"Hey, look at that superficially amusing ‘viral’ video created by a International Poison..."

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 21:51:41 -0800

““Hey, look at that superficially amusing ‘viral’ video created by a International Poison Corp. I will now spread it to my circle of friends via social media, thereby providing, for free, valuable word-of-mouth marketing and a ‘halo effect’ of youth and coolness that International Poison Corp. so craves, much like an ancient vampire craves a young virgin’s sweet lifeblood.””

- Millennials.

Actually, Hamilton Nolan.

jayrosen: “Confidently unaware…” D.C. Muecke identifies three...

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 20:45:56 -0800

jayrosen:

“Confidently unaware…”

D.C. Muecke identifies three basic features of irony. First, irony depends on a double-layered or two-story phenomenon for its success. “At the lower level is the situation either as it appears to the victim of irony (where there is a victim) or as it is deceptively presented by the ironist.” The upper level is the situation as it appears to the reader or the ironist. Second, the ironist exploits a contradiction, incongruity, or incompatibility between the two levels. Third, irony plays upon the innocence of a character or victim. “Either a victim is confidently unaware of the very possibility of there being an upper level or point of view that invalidates his own, or an ironist pretends not to be aware of it.” (Source.)

"If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go..."

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 11:01:08 -0800

““If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go nuts. We’re not losing 95% of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough.””

- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by Politico, saying that demographics would be the only reason for a hypothetical Mitt Romney loss Tuesday.

The best part is people are actually saying this.

h/t Scripting News.

“To be crouched alongside numerous world player of the...

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 10:15:09 -0700

“To be crouched alongside numerous world player of the years while the windows of your bus are nearly getting smashed in is a strange old feeling.” — Macca describes el Clásico to the Guardian (image c/o the Guardian’s Sport Blog).

"Well, the specifics are these which is those principles I described are the heart of my policy."

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 09:15:24 -0700

““Well, the specifics are these which is those principles I described are the heart of my policy.””

- The Romney-Ryan tax plan, everybody!

Mitt Romney on Meet the Press this morning.

"How is the money spent? [Mainly] an ever-increasing volume of negative, distorting and ideologically..."

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 01:05:00 -0700

“How is the money spent? [Mainly] an ever-increasing volume of negative, distorting and ideologically tinged advertising about opposing candidates and parties. Contrary to what many believe, the central effect of such negative advertising isn’t to move voters from supporting another candidate to backing yours, as Mitt Romney and his allies have discovered during this primary season. The main effect is not even to move undecided voters into your column. No, the real effect of negative advertising is to energize and solidify support among your ideological base while turning everyone else off to the other candidate, the campaign and the entire electoral process. Negative advertising isn’t about changing minds; it’s about altering the composition of the voter pool on Election Day by turning moderate voters into non-voters.”

- Steve Pearlstein, “Turned off from politics? That’s exactly what the politicians want.”

Forget about “undecided” voters. They don’t exist anyway (they’ve already decided). Follow the money instead. It’s all about the composition of the voter pool.

EDIT: Link and parentheses added.

jayrosen: Fake symmetry carries instructions for its own...

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 02:47:44 -0700

jayrosen:

Fake symmetry carries instructions for its own perpetuation.

Obama spoke to the American Society of Newspaper editors this week. Here’s what he said about fake symmetry in political journalism, after being asked this question: ”What can you say to the Americans who just want both sides to stop fighting and get some work done on their behalf?”

I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing, then they’re equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and an equivalence is presented — which reinforces I think people’s cynicism about Washington generally. [The debate over deficit reduction] is not one of those situations where there’s an equivalence. I’ve got some of the most liberal Democrats in Congress who were prepared to make significant changes to entitlements that go against their political interests, and who said they were willing to do it. And we couldn’t get a Republican to stand up and say, we’ll raise some revenue, or even to suggest that we won’t give more tax cuts to people who don’t need them.

About the part in bold he is absolutely right. And I have seen no recognition by anyone in political journalism that Obama had a point.

But appreciate how well-defended the system is. For journalists, the whole point of “they’re equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle” is to advertise how unswayed you are by either side. If one of those sides, Mr. Obama, tries to persuade you that you’ve entered into a destructive pattern—like, say, fake symmetry—and you listen to him, conceding that he might have a fair point, then… you’ve been swayed!

But remember the reason you got into the fake symmetry biz in the first place. To show that you cannot be swayed. Therefore the pattern teaches you how to discount criticism of the pattern. It’s kind of the obverse of “the system contains the seeds of its own destruction.” Fake symmetry is a system that comes with instructions for its own perpetuation.

_______

Bonus link: Gloria Borger of CNN makes Obama’s point for him. Perfectly, I mean.

(Photo of Obama speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors by Steve Buttry. Used by permission.)

"Some scientists have contended that figures of speech like “a rough day” are so familiar that they..."

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:41:58 -0700

“Some scientists have contended that figures of speech like “a rough day” are so familiar that they are treated [by the brain] simply as words and no more.”

- Annie Murphy Paul in a New York Times op-ed, “Your Brain on Fiction”.

This is why, as Martin Amis puts it, literature is a “war on cliche”; a war on heard words.

vicemag: When I die, I hope people make off-color jokes about me on Twitter, and I hope some of...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:03:36 -0800

vicemag:

When I die, I hope people make off-color jokes about me on Twitter, and I hope some of those jokes (a lot of those jokes) are offensive. Because that’s what I did to people when they were alive. If you’re not comfortable with people saying shitty things about you when you die, then try not to be a despicable human being when you are alive. Like Andrew Breitbart was.

–- Michael Ian Black

"You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They..."

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:19:20 -0800

“You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”

- Banksy channels Fugazi. (via sirmitchell)

"Life is unfair. Republican venality unintentionally reinforces the conservative argument that..."

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:23:00 -0800

“Life is unfair. Republican venality unintentionally reinforces the conservative argument that government is corrupt. Democratic venality undermines the Democratic argument that Washington can be trusted to do good.”

- Unintentionally? Unintentionally? David Brooks should know better. He might start with this mea culpa by a congressional staffer who left the GOP after thirty years of service last year:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

Also note how Brooks is characteristically guilty of the “centrist cop-out”. Attempting to avoid charges of partisan bias, he suggests that both sides are equally culpable for the problem he diagnoses, Americans’ lack of trust in government.

Update: One more thing. David Brooks is also guilty of what I’d like to provisionally name the fallacy of innocence. But of course our good congresspeople are acting with only the best of intentions. Politicians might act in bad faith in those other loser countries, those other ones way over there, but not our good congresspeople here in America. Any side benefit to Republican intransigence is purely coincidental and entirely unintentional.

scribnerbooks: guardian: Christopher Hitchen: 1949 - 2011 His...

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:06:51 -0800

scribnerbooks:

guardian:

Christopher Hitchen: 1949 - 2011

His life in quotes

“I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn’t ever have to rely on the press for my information.” – Hitch-22, 2010

A great loss.

"He’s been consistent since he changed his mind."

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:53:11 -0800

“He’s been consistent since he changed his mind.”

- Christine O’Donnell, on why she endorsed Mitt Romney. (via think-progress)

"A banking system is supposed to serve society, not the other way around."

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:15:50 -0800

“A banking system is supposed to serve society, not the other way around.”

- Economist Joseph Stiglitz, discussing a Great Depression reprisal. (via vanityfair)

vanityfair: “Rick is not dumb,” says a college classmate. “He’s...

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:33:58 -0800

vanityfair:

“Rick is not dumb,” says a college classmate. “He’s just not educated.”

Rick Perry. Illustration by Andre Carrilho.

A fine distinction.

"I don’t say this lightly, but the consumer is simply an income stream and exploiting that is the..."

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:51:38 -0800

“I don’t say this lightly, but the consumer is simply an income stream and exploiting that is the purpose of the banking organization.”

- Former JPMorgan executive David Mooney.

This is the kind of thing George Bailey would disagree with.

(via occupywallstreet)

"The world will snap back and it will be a surprise and it will be faster than people think. I don’t..."

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 08:53:26 -0800

“The world will snap back and it will be a surprise and it will be faster than people think. I don’t know when that will be and we will gear ourselves accordingly.”

- Goldman’s Blankfein: Growth to ‘Snap Back’ - Bloomberg

What could possibly go wrong?

(via felixsalmon)

"People who think of themselves as “good” did these things, which is mainly a sobering..."

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:40:09 -0800

“People who think of themselves as “good” did these things, which is mainly a sobering reminder of what we’re all capable of.”

- A chastening reminder of the humanity of the Penn State sexual abuse case from James Fallows.

It’s disquieting to think that good people (or at least people who think that they’re good) can harbour sex criminals or be racist. But we would all do well to reflect on this insight and step back from our own moral certitudes and self-confidence.

"What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world’s common treasury by a handful..."

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:29:54 -0800

“What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world’s common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I’m sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattooed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%. George Monbiot, from his piece on our Comment Is Free site: ‘The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen’”

- The Guardian: Quote